New York, Through the Tour Bus Window: Arabs; Sodom And Gotham

By NEIL MACFARQUHAR

Published: August 21, 1995

In an attempt to relax during her visit to New York City, Nelly Mubarak broke a religious commandment. She bowed to family advice and left her Islamic veils at home.

"In Egypt they told me that many people, salespeople in the stores, for instance, would be a little afraid of me," said Mrs. Mubarak, 53, sitting on the Statue of Liberty ferry. "I feel strange and I worry that God will see me and be upset."

It takes a certain leap of faith for many Middle Easterners to become tourists in a country they find to be a combination of Oz and Gomorrah. Better relations with the United States and the spread of satellite television have engendered a fascination with things American, especially New York. At the same time, crime news, violent adventure movies and a perceived anti-Arab bias give them the sense that any breath drawn on American soil might be their last.

"Most of them have the impression from the movies that you can't get out of a place like Harlem alive," said Adly Elzoheary, the tour guide and a 15-year resident. "So we take them through there at night, which gets them very excited."

Ideal Travel, a New York company, inaugurated a service on July 1 that offers package trips to groups of 30 Egyptians.

The two-day schedule is compacted, producing odd little warps like driving down Wall Street at 9:30 P.M. on a Saturday. But no one seems to mind. Some keep video cameras glued to one eyeball. The rest maintain a running commentary.

"Why is there so much crime here?" said Magida Negm, a soap opera director. "You have an army that controls the whole world, and you can't control Harlem? You can't control the Mafia?"

At the World Trade Center, Mr. Elzoheary fields questions on most such visits about the conspiracy trial attempting to link an Egyptian cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, to the Trade Center bombing.

"You know they expelled him from Egypt because he was not a decent man," said Mrs. Mubarak (no relation to the Egyptian President). "Islam never permits violence; it is a religion of mercy."

The group is unleashed for three hours to shop on 34th Street, and outside Macy's, a man accosts Mrs. Mubarak for spare change, cursing and feinting a lunge. She collapses, crying, into a friend's arms and staggers back to the bus.

"When he lunged, everything people warned me about flashed through my head," she said, recovering her composure. "But I had to see America. If I had not, I may as well never have traveled." NEIL MacFARQUHAR